Varying teaching techniques throughout a class session and course can foster greater student learning and engagement. This post develops two hypotheses as to why variety enhances learning and engagement and offers a short list of teaching techniques to supplement your Socratic-style questioning.

Why Varying Teaching Methods Enhances Learning and Engagement

Reason 1: Keeping Students’ Attention Via Variety Promotes Learning. One of the largest barriers to student learning is their attention. While getting and keeping our students’ attention may be harder in an age that includes the Internet and social media, attention has always been a barrier. Even 30 years ago, a common response to my Socratic-style questions was “What was the question, Professor?” Variety helps because, each type we change our technique, especially if the new technique is very different, from the prior one, we have a chance to recapture our students’ attention. Moreover, if our new technique requires every student to speak with a peer, answer a multiple choice question by holding up an A,B,C, or D card, or write something, every student has no choice but to engage. It arguably goes without saying that, if the students are paying attention, they are more likely to be learning.

Reason 2: Using a Variety of Teaching Techniques Communicates Our Commitment to Our Students’ Learning and Stimulates Their Efforts to Commit to Their Learning. One of my most vivid recollections of the dozens of focus groups I conducted for What the Best Law Teachers Do was hearing, over and over, “I would never be unprepared for Professor ___________’s class because Professor __________ worked so hard and cared so much about our learning.” In those conversations, students would cite their best professors’ frequent changes of teaching techniques as evidence that their professor cared. This factor can be made especially manifest by asking students what teaching techniques work best for them and promising to use all the methods the students asked for. When students recognize we are deviating from legal education’s signature technique, Socratic-style questioning, because they asked or because we want to be sure they are learning, they engage more, prepare harder for class, and persist when things get difficult because they know we will work to make sure they learn. Of course, when students engage more, prepare harder for class, and persist when things get difficult, they learn better.

A Menu of A Few Interactive Teaching Techniques

• Any of the small group techniques detailed in this prior blog post
• Free writing: Asking students to write out their answers in response to a hypothetical question or their views on a policy choice
• Integrated multiple-choice questions: Requiring students to respond with their answers by holding up an A, B, C, or D card (I have about 100 of these printed and laminated. I have students hold up a card because the anonymity of electronic response systems make it easier for students not to engage.)
• Creating a flow chart or hierarchy chart to depict a complex body of law, such as all the ways that a party’s power to accept an offer can be terminated and the rules governing each.
• A video hypothetical. Using an excerpt from a movie or creating a mini-video hypothetical.
• Moot oral arguments. Putting students in groups of three, two lawyers and a judge to argue a close legal issue.
• Lecture.